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While the primary world in the Tancredi system (and the focus of this article) is Tancredi IV, the planet Tancredi II is mentioned as well in a canonical source for a battle fought there: According to The Fox's Teeth: Exploits of McKinnon's Raiders, pp. 8-9, McKinnon's Raiders fought on Tancredi II "more than a year ago", suffering significant damage to at least two of their BattleMechs and the death of MechWarrior Alex Forster. No detailed information on Tancredi II is provided, nor any details about the battle or against whom it was fought. The date of the battle is also unspecified, but the scenario pack's setting suggests it must have taken place "more than a year ago" from either 3025 (the usual time setting for BattleTech products in that era) or from May 3029 (the latest date given for any scenario in the book, and since confirmed as false), or at any time in-between.

Due to an administrative error the original exploration report of Tancredi IV was lost, leaving a gap of several decades between the planet being surveyed and the first colonization attempts. The settlers who came to Tancredi discovered that the initial surveys had been far too conservative in their assessment of the prospects for colonization; Tancredi had sufficient fresh water to support a large population, plenty of arable land and huge metal deposits buried beneath the soil. Within two decades of the first settlements being established on the Jaipur continent Tancredi IV had become a major manufacturing force in the local region of space and was regularly attracting new companies and investment as a result of an aggressive marketing campaign.[3]

Tancredi IV was originally colonized in the late twenty-fourth century by descendants of the aboriginal peoples of the North American continent on Terra, who believed that the temperate lands with wide open plains would enable them to return to their cultural roots, reminiscent as the land was of their ancestral homelands. The settlers managed to maintain their cultural beliefs even when the additional resources discovered on the planet brought increased commercial investment and exploitation to Tancredi, and a highly martial society evolved on the planet, one that encouraged the belief that an individual's measure was proved through physical feats and combat.[69]

The warrior culture of Tancredi IV led to the founding of a strong planetary defense force, as well as drawing the attention of the Federated Suns, still a young and growing realm at the time. Tancredi IV joined the Federated Suns, and the prowess of the local forces was recognised, with Tancredi IV becoming the capital of the Draconis March Principality and with the Federated Peacekeeping Forces establishing the core of the March's combat brigade around Tancredi's planetary defense force. That brigade was aptly named the Tancredi Warriors Brigade.[69]

Tancredi IV was still the capital of the Draconis March during the Davion Civil War, and was the seat of power for Princess Laura Davion and ultimately the site of the final battle between the forces led by Alexander Davion and Dmitri Rostov and those loyal to Laura. The two-year campaign against the Draconis March forces by Alexander and Rostov began in 2531 and culminated in the battle on Tancredi in 2533 between a massive Davion strike force and the cream of the remaining Draconis March forces. Laura's forces were defeated comprehensively, and on the 27th of November Laura wrote a 26-page suicide note before killing herself. This was followed on the 28th by the surrender of Laura's senior surviving officer, General K'trinka, who surrendered on behalf of the Draconis March.[70]

Laura's defeat had been hastened by the defection of a significant portion of the Tancredi Warriors Brigade to Prince Alexander's banner. A large part of the Tancredi-born personnel within the Brigade had declared their support for Alexander when he began his push into the Draconis March, support Alexander sorely needed, and after the war Alexander recognized the loyalty of the surviving regiments by reforming them into a new brigade, the Tancredi Loyalists. The new brigade's name was a direct reflection of the loyalty shown by its personnel during the war, and the brigade would continue to enjoy a high status within the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns for at least two centuries afterwards.[69]

In the early 2500s the Tancredi War College was founded on Tancredi IV; the college favored local candidates from the outset, with only fifty percent of the intake each year being open to off-worlders. Over the next two and a half centuries the reputation of the Tancredi War College grew, and it would be regarded as a near-equal to the Albion Military Academy and the New Avalon Military Academy, specializing in training infantry soldiers and artillery crews but also actively training both MechWarriors and Aerospace pilots. The greater part of the personnel recruited to serve in the Tancredi Loyalists would be either natives of Tancredi IV or graduates from the Tancredi War College.[71]

In the eyes of most people in the late 26th Century, Tancredi IV was a minor agricultural world inhabited by a few thousand farmers and ranchers, located on the border between the Outworlds Alliance and the Federated Suns and continually wavering in allegience between both nations. However, despite the apparent unimportance of this minor world, Tancredi IV would play a vital part in the survival of the Outworlds Alliance before and during the five-year invasion of the Alliance by the Star League.[10]

In the late 2570s, the Outworlds Alliance government was clandestinely purchasing military supplies from a number of sources with which to resist an anticipated invasion from the Star League following the widespread rejection of the Pollux Proclamation in 2575. Some of these sources were companies within the Federated Suns, and the illegal procurements were discovered by First Prince Alexander Davion in 2578. Rather than report the shipments to the Star League, Davion stopped the supply of materiel and began what would be several years of covert negotiations between himself and Alliance President Grigori Avellar. These negotiations culminated in a secret meeting on Tancredi IV in March of 2579 between Grigori Avellar and Lawrence Davion, the youngest son of Alexander Davion.[10]

These negotiations resulted in the arms shipments resuming, with Tancredi IV the final destination for supplies from sources across the Federated Suns before those supplies were then distributed across the Alliance. Negotiations between the two states didn't end there, however; as the Star League war against the Taurian Concordat escalated and the Star League began a campaign against the Magistracy of Canopus, Avellar and Davion concluded a secret agreement named the Tancredi Accord that was be signed on New Avalon on the 5th of June 2581 pledging twelve under-developed but water-rich Alliance worlds to the Federated suns in exchange for covert military aid - including supplying the Pitcairn Legion - and a pledge to support a fair peace solution for the Alliance within the Star League Council.[10]

Despite the significance of Tancredi IV to the overall defense of the Outworlds Alliance, it was ignored by the Star League Outworlds Alliance Task Force until 2582. Having regrouped after the initial wave of the invasion into the Alliance, GeneralAmos Forlough responded to intelligence suggesting that Tancredi IV was somehow vital to the Alliance defense efforts by deploying two brigades to annex the world and investigate the rumours. These two brigades - the 14th Brigade and 15th Brigade - were drawn from the 5th Division of II Corps and were commanded directly by the CO of the 5th Division, Major GeneralAngelo Rucker and landed on Tancredi IV in January 2582.[72]

Tancredi IV had no standing defense force, and both the SLDF landings and subsequent search of the planet were effectively unopposed. Despite the quietly agrarian appearance of Tancredi IV, Rucker was determined to conduct a systematic search of the planet, and after a month was close to giving up on discovering any evidence contradicting the apparently minor value of the world when three military DropShips lifted off from a remote region. Despite a hastily formed SLDF blockade, the three DropShips ran the blockade using three squadrons of heavy fighters as cover before vanishing from the system via a rendezvous with a JumpShip at a local pirate point.[72]

When recon flights from the Star League forces finally found the launch site of the three DropShips, they discovered evidence indicating that dozens of DropShips had probably used the site as a transfer point for military equipment of all sorts, including 'Mechs and armor, but no threat of violence or interrogation used against the inhabitants of Tancredi IV ever turned up conclusive evidence of who had been operating covertly from the world.[72]

In 2701 the Justice Building in the city state of Count Donvier Rossini was destroyed by the Count, who also executed his critics in defiance of the Laws of Noble Conduct and Review, the state laws published by the First Prince in 2634 that guaranteed the right for public inquiries into the actions of the nobility. The response from the First Prince was swift - a unit of the elite Royal Guards was swiftly dispatched to bring Rossini to justice, and Rossini was tried, found guilty and subjected to public execution for this actions.[73]

The First Succession War saw Tancredi IV become one of the first targets for the DCMS because of it's strong industrial base, and those same industries that had driven Tancredi's economic expansion became casualties of the war.[3]

During the Second Succession War Tancredi was a number of worlds assaulted by the Draconis Combine, with the battle for control of the world heating up in July 2840 as part of a Combine plan to freeze AFFS forces in a contested area of the border between the two realms. In addition to contesting Tancredi, battles heated up on the worlds of Anguilla and Sturgis at the same time and the Combine launched a significant raid on Robinson, the Draconis March capital.[74][24]

Tancredi IV was captured by the Draconis Combine early in the Third Succession War, and the population suffered under Combine rule despite the Combine inflicting relatively little harm on the surviving industries. The suffering of the locals increased as the Kuritan government began exporting most of Tancredi's food production to feed the DCMS, leading to several major famines on the world.[3]

Tancredi was recaptured by the Federated Suns in 3022. The AFFS was able to recapture Tancredi IV along with other worlds such as Rome and Galatia III thanks to the signing of the Federated-Commonwealth Alliance Document between the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth in 3022, and the exchange of military intelligence sufficient to allow both the Federated Suns and the Lyrans to launch successful campaigns against their mutual foe, the Draconis Combine.[26] By 3025 Tancredi would be serving as the location of the head ministry office responsible for administering the Tancredi Administrative Area of the Draconis March under the oversight of Sub-Minister E. Drison, the Chief Administrator of the Administrative Area.[75] Since the liberation of Tancredi First Prince Hanse Davion approved a massive reconstruction program to try and bring Tancredi's industrial base back to it's previous capacity, but the Succession Wars had done so much damage to the agricultural regions of the planet that major famines were still a constant danger.[3]

As late as the 3050s, the transfer point from which arms and supplies were moved into the Outworlds Alliance from the Federated Suns during the Reunification War was maintained as a carefully preserved site of historical interest; located in the Grey Mountains several hours from Granite Peak, the site contained two period DropShips erected with displays from the period inside. Named the "Transfer Point Museum", the site contained recordings, memorabilia and weapons from the war, along with a library replete with a large collection of Reunification War-era publications.[11]

In 3072 the Precision Weaponry plant on Tancredi IV acted without approval from the Federated Suns government and established production lines for the manufacture of limited numbers of RetroTech BattleMechs to supply to Draconis March militia units. By 3079 the Federated Suns government had ordered Precision Weaponry to close the production lines producing these primitive 'Mechs, but Precision were continuing to produce primitive versions of the Battleaxe, Rifleman and Rook from their underground facility.[2]